Shark victims urged to come forward
By Lee Williams
A national team that hunts down loan sharks and offers support to their victims is making its presence felt in Bournemouth.
The Illegal Money Lending Team (IMLT), set up by Trading Standards, gave a presentation at Bournemouth Town Hall on Monday to raise awareness about loan sharks and their victims in the local area.
LIASE officer for Bournemouth, Cath Wohlers 
who works with the team said: We are newly authorised in Bournemouth and want to blitz the area to see what we can find out”.
According to IMLT information an estimated 310,000 households in the UK are borrowing from illegal money lenders, paying typical interest rates of 1,000% or more and facing threats and violent attacks if they are unable to pay.
So far the IMLT has arrested over 500 loan sharks nationwide and secured over 190 prosecutions. These include people like Paul Nicholson who lived in a luxury mansion in Cheshire and used knuckledusters and baseball bats to enforce debts. Mr Nicholson was forced to pay back all his assets amounting to more than £850,000.
Apart from tracking down these loan sharks, much of the team’s work involves raising local awareness and offering lifelines to victims of illegal lending with confidential phone and text lines. They also provide free training sessions to organisations who might deal with victims of loan sharks.
Many such organisations attended Monday’s presentation at Bournemouth town hall. These included local housing associations, Bournemouth Council and Bournemouth Citizens Advice Bureau. A representative of Bournemouth Citizens Advice Bureau, Karen Hancock said: “It can only be a good thing to raise awareness of this kind of thing in Bournemouth.
“In my line of work people are not very forthcoming about where they’re borrowing money from. They just say they’ve borrowed it from a friend. The kind of training offered will hopefully be useful for learning the right kind of questions to ask to find out who is really affected by loan sharks.”
The presentation included a workshop to brainstorm ways of raising awareness in areas of Bournemouth thought to be at high risk such as Boscombe and West Howe. Ideas included putting advertisements on beer mats in local pubs. Another idea was to have local school children design posters and flyers about the problem of loan sharks.
IMLT representative, Cath Wohlers who led the presentation said: “We want this to be the start of a conversation and we will use these ideas to come up with an action plan for Bournemouth.”
Lee Williams is a budding journalist and writer who lives and works in the local area.
http://ayellowsmile.wordpress.com/
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